Two Temecula residents sued the Temecula Valley Unified School District, its Board of Trustees, and its president, Joseph Komrosky, for violating their rights under the First Amendment and California law by ejecting them from school board meetings without cause.
FAC argued the court should hear the case because a lower court incorrectly decided that the California Public Records Act does not authorize a court to issue any remedy beyond ordering disclosure of specific records, including but not limited to a finding that the agency failed to make an adequate search for records.
On November 15, 2023, the ACLU of Northern California (“ACLU NorCal”) and the First Amendment Coalition (“FAC”) sued the City of Fresno for holding secret budget negotiations in violation of the Brown Act, California’s open meetings law for local governments. The lawsuit asks the court to order Fresno to comply with the Brown Act’s open meeting, notice, and public comment requirements. Since at least 2018, the Fresno City Council’s Budget Committee has negotiated the city’s
On February 14, 2019, represented by Michael Risher, the First Amendment Coalition sued the California Attorney General for violating Senate Bill 1421 (“SB 1421”), California’s landmark police transparency law that mandated disclosure of records about police shootings, significant uses of force, and serious forms of misconduct. FAC took legal action because the Attorney General’s office had refused to disclose records otherwise covered by SB 1421 simply because they were created by another agency, such as
People sound their car horns every day to express themselves. It’s common, part of the American tradition — and it’s also a type of expression protected by the First Amendment. But in California, expressive horn use is against the law under the state’s motor vehicle code. David Loy, FAC’s Legal Director, brought a challenge to this law in 2018 while he was at the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties. The case is